Jennifer Fitzgerald On Office Management
This is part 2 of a 4 part series. Jennifer Fitzgerald was our guest on the CashFlowShow – Direct Sales Radio discussing the topic of office management and The Client Angel home party plan business software.
If you did not read the first article then you should start here: Home Party Customer Service Part #1
Welcome back, everybody! We’re so glad you joined us on the CashFlowShow Radio.
Client Angel Creator, Jennifer Fitzgerald
This is Deb Bixler, and we have a special guest here today, Jen Fitzgerald creator of the Client Angel, and we are talking about office management and staying organized, which is sometimes a challenge because everybody’s really, really busy. Right, Jennifer?
JENNIFER FITZGERALD: Oh, my goodness, yes, definitely.
DEB BIXLER: Yeah. You know, I teach a lot of education in direct sellers about different systems. I’m a big systems person and I can tell you are as well. And you know, a system per se, host coaching. Part of it includes coming right home and sending out a thank-you card and then two weeks later, or six weeks before the show, four weeks before the show, send them out a card and then two later or one week later. You know, sometimes I get down with these trainings calls, and people say, “Well, that’s way too much work. [Laughter] I can’t do that.”
JENNIFER FITZGERALD: Exactly.
DEB BIXLER: And so it sounds you have so many ideas. You know how to stay organized, so it’s really not that much work.
JENNIFER FITZGERALD: It’s really not, you know. One of the things that I’m a big advocate of is as soon as you get home from that home show, do it all right then. And one of the things I tell some of the ladies when they say the same things you just said, “Well, you know, I’m tired. I get home late,” or you know, “It’s too much for me to do and it takes too long.”
Take a little egg timer and set it, and you’ll see that you could probably knock out doing all the stuff you need to do, writing that thank-you card and putting your show into your system, tracking those notes or whatever other system you keep all the notes in, you could probably be done within 20 to 30 minutes, and it’s all done, it’s off your mind. You know, it’s not weighing out there on you, and it’s there. Once you get to the point where you do that and it’s automatic, then it’s just so easy and you’re so much further ahead of the game that way.
DEB BIXLER: Oh, absolutely. Like when we were talking before the break, I mentioned about your thank-you card. That to me is essential. If they send that out as quick as possible so that people get really excited at shows, and then they’re really happy about scheduling a show when they’re there because they had fun and they’re excited and they’re involved. But then three days later they go home, they throw your host packet on the counter and then [laughter] it’s like, “What the heck was I thinking?”
And so that confirmation postcard sets a whole level of professionalism, and then it arrives in their mailbox, in their real mailbox, you know, two days later and they’re like, “Oh…” and they put on their calendar.
JENNIFER FITZGERALD: Right.
DEB BIXLER: Right.
Home Party Consultants
JENNIFER FITZGERALD: You know, one of the few other things that I’ve suggested to some of the home party consultants that I’ve talked to before is when you actually go to the show and you want to do the thank-you card after for somebody who’s hosted the show, take a little camera with you and you can take a picture of you and the hostess, or you know, take a whole group photo of all of her people with her. But make sure you are in the photo too so that when you do those cards - you know where they can do the picture on the card and you can send it out? Or you can print out the picture, you know, like a day later and stick it in the card and mail it out? Because what I found is it’s a great way for you to stay in front of that hostess’s face because most of the people won’t throw a picture of themselves away.
So if you take a picture with the hostess, or with her whole group with you in it and send it to her, with that little thank you and you could put it in a frame or stick it on a refrigerator, then she’s also always got you in the back of her mind when she sees the picture with you in it as well.
DEB BIXLER: Right, right and that’s really good. You know, I went to a conference one time — oh, what was that guy’s name? Larry Binet, Larry Binet, I think. He calls himself “The Connector.” [Laughter] That’s his calling card, “The Connector,” and after the — we talked, we had a nice time, this was a big multilevel marketing conference, lots of bigwigs. And afterwards he sent me a picture, a thank-you note, “nice to meet you” and a picture of him and me that somebody had taken. And I’m like, “Wow, that’s cool!” You know, and other pieces. It’s so cool to get real mail, it’s real.
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JENNIFER FITZGERALD: Yeah, yeah. Exactly.
DEB BIXLER: Right. Instead of that junk, you know. And email’s okay. I use Thunderbird. It’s not Outlook Express, it’s not Outlook, it’s Thunderbird. It’s an open-source, and it has a pretty robust calendar system. And what I do is program in my calendar or my calls, my contacts, things like that, but I think if I had to do it for — because I’m not actively — I used to do 20 shows a month. I think if I was doing that number of shows it would be too much for me to constantly be programming every single one.
People are always saying that three postcards is too many, how am I going to remember to send them out, this and that and the other thing, I just always said, “Well, you fill them out when you send out the host packet, and then don’t put the stamp on them, put the date you’re going to mail it next to the postcard, and put it next to your outgoing mail. And when you’re on an airplane, fill them all out generically [laughter] and then plug the name in.” Right? Because I always use airplane time for filing out postcards and then just plug it in the mail, but I know that Client Angel has a system of keeping you abreast of what has to happen next, right?
Hostess Coaching With Client Angel
JENNIFER FITZGERALD: It does. So in the Client Angel, we have a Hostess Coaching Timeline. And what you would do is when you go in and you enter that customer or that client, which would be your hostess, you would also then put the date of the show and the date of the booking in there. There’s a dropdown menu and you just add those calendar days in. What that does is generate a whole bunch of reminders for you. So all of your hostess coaching stuff is basically programmed out for you. And then you can customize it depending on how your company does hostess coaching. If you want all of the reminders or just a few, it’s really up to you.
But what’s great about it is through the Client Angel, you put your email in there when you’re setting everything up, and it will send those reminders to your email for you. So you don’t have to think about it. You plug the date of the show in, the date you got the booking, and it generates all of those reminders for you, and it sends into your email and then you don’t have to think at all about it; you just check your email once a day and, “Oh yeah. I’ve got to do this and this and this.”
DEB BIXLER: So you have the ability to customize it on the backend a little bit? Like if I want my emails, or my postcards to go out, say, whatever, five weeks, three weeks and three days, so — and then Sally Smith wants hers to go out four weeks, you know, two weeks, and so each person can change that and then get the reminder at their appropriate time.
JENNIFER FITZGERALD: Exactly.
DEB BIXLER: Cool.
JENNIFER FITZGERALD: So we’ve generated reminders; but honestly they are in [pre-text] boxes. It plugs in stuff that you can do if you don’t want to have to think about stuff; but if you have your own specific way you do host coaching, then just delete out the information that’s in the pre-text box and put your own stuff in, set your own date — because it’ll pre-generate dates, but you can change all of these too. So it’s completely customizable to you as well, but we have a template in there to get people started with it.
DEB BIXLER: Right, right. Cool. Excellent.
JENNIFER FITZGERALD: Yeah.
DEB BIXLER: Yeah. Well, so I know that following up with your customers — and you wrote an article for the blog, and guests can read it at cashflowshowradio.com. But you mentioned something in that article that struck me, and that is that consultants always think that their customers are loyal to them and they’re going to call them every time they need something, but my experience is customers are loyal to their friends.
JENNIFER FITZGERALD: Yeah.
DEB BIXLER: [Laughter]
JENNIFER FITZGERALD: You’re exactly right.
DEB BIXLER: And so [laughter] if you’re not in front of them—and I don’t mean being pushy and rude, but if you’re not in their face on a regular basis—then when they’re at the next show, they’re going to be loyal to their friends as opposed to the consultant. How do you — that was an interesting point you made in the article but how do you — what do you recommend?
Customer Service = Friendship
JENNIFER FITZGERALD: That’s exactly right, as we were talking about earlier. You know, customer service is being a good friend, and if you develop that friendship with your customers and you learn those things about them, then staying in front of them and keeping in front of their face is not hard because, what I say is we try to do 50-50. Because you can send them emails 50 percent sales and things you have going on because they obviously expect you to promote your products as well. I mean, that’s your job, you’re a direct seller and you have a product to sell.
And they would be — I think, they would be kind of — it would be weird if you didn’t try to sell them stuff at least once a month or tell them about sales and things like that you have going on.
But the other 50 percent of the time, there should be nothing about your products in there at all. I mean, you can have it in your tag line in your email, but it’s all going to be about them, you know. If they’re going on a vacation, “Have a good time,” “Hey, I know it’s your child’s birthday.” You know, “I know your husband has a big conference or something coming up.” You know, all of that kind of stuff. And so you’re constantly staying in front of them but not constantly selling to them, and that’s the big key right there because you’re becoming their friend and not just their representative.
DEB BIXLER: Right, right. And, you know, the classic newsletter. We are all inundated with emails and newsletters and things like that, but I believe that if you send out a newsletter that creates value to the recipient, whatever your niche is, if you’re in cosmetics, you could be giving tips on skin care. Like my newsletter people, “Everybody go to cashflowshowradio.com. If you’re not on the newsletter, join it because you’d get awesome tips every week.”
JENNIFER FITZGERALD: I’m on it, it’s great [laughter].
DEB BIXLER: [Laughter] Oh, thank you, but when you provide enough value for your recipients then they’re going to remember you, but it’s okay to have a soft sell in your newsletters and a periodic real sales-y kind of pitch as long as you are providing value to your customers. We are going to take a break now so please check out The Client Angel and also our other sponsors!
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Client Angel Office Management (2 of 4)
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